


mūlādhāra

by tashii



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar)-centric, Air Nomads (Avatar), F/M, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29698437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tashii/pseuds/tashii
Summary: Mūlādhāra is the root. It’s life and joy, family and passion.In a city tied to Air Nomad history, Aang begins to contemplate his future. (Companion piece toa thousand little facesbut can be read as a standalone)
Relationships: Aang (Avatar)/Original Female Character(s), Aang/Azula (Avatar)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	mūlādhāra

_“He saw the lightning in the east and longed for the east, but if it had flashed in the west he would have longed for the west. My desire is for the lightning and its gleam, not for the places and the earth.”_ \- Ibin ‘Arabi, _Poem Fourteen._

They had two hours before Kamlai’s sister returned with the children, three if they’re lucky. But neither of them are counting. They enjoyed each other in free and guiltless ways, with whatever time they found. It’s what drew Aang to Kamlai when he met her, years ago, during a celebration held in Palembang, her native city.

She’s beautiful. A heart-shaped face, almond eyes full of alluring mischief and long, fine limbs that moved with steady grace. She’s also older, the mother of three young children, a shrewd businesswoman and kind neighbor. In the years after he and Katara parted ways, Aang enjoyed Kamlai’s company whenever he visited Palembang. But today his body and thoughts, usually so pleasantly aligned when he was with Kamlai, are unfocused. He watches her ride him, the beautiful gleam of sweat on skin, and shuts his eyes. The pleasure of her rocking hips takes over, until heat races up his spine, blooming into white-hot fire where Azula’s lightning pierced him. His eyes fly open and he sees _her_ , her patrician face and pointed chin, the faint red smile, those eyes that miss nothing. He’s inside her, his hands on her naked skin. 

_Azula_. 

Aang goes bone-still, but Kamlai has already noticed, her fingers brushing warmly against his cheek. She peers at him with concern. “What’s wrong, _sayang_? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m sorry,” he says while she moves to lie beside him. He wipes a hand across his eyes and Azula fades, but his scar still burns faintly. Kamlai watches him with wry tenderness.

“You spend too much time alone,” she chides. “All those long trips by yourself. It’s not good for the spirit.”

“I’m not alone, I have Appa and Momo.”

She sucks her teeth. “You need a wife, Aang. Someone to keep your head out of the clouds.” She taps the blue arrow on his forehead, “And here on earth with the rest of us.”

His people’s approach to marriage and family, like everything else, reflected the freedom of their element. Monks and nuns took lovers, or they didn’t. Some of them entered lifelong bonds, others found seasonal companions. He himself was born in the Eastern Temple, and his mother had chosen Gyatso for his spiritual guardian, but as a child surrounded by numerous mothers, fathers, older and younger brothers and sisters, family, like air, was simply what you lived and breathed. But just as the Hundred Year War had seemingly erased the Air Nomads, they had also rendered their customs alien to people who, perhaps rightly, wanted to hold fast to things they loved. A nomadic life with no material ties held no appeal for people scarred by the upheavals of war, even when they tried. Certainly it hadn’t worked for him and Katara, though they had loved each other, though they had tried. He could always choose an Air Acolyte as a companion, but he was more relic to them than person, and while their reverence for Air Nomad culture was admirable, it was little suited for companionship. He didn’t want to simply be the last airbender in his intimate life. He wanted to be Aang too. And such a distinction would be impossible for people who worshipped him as a savior and a god. 

For now, he makes light of it. “And who would want to marry me?” 

“Nobody, if you continue like this,” Kamlai says, gesturing at their half-joined bodies.

Aang laughs, conceding her point. “I should work on that,” he says, drawing her close to him again. He breathes her warm, musky scent and drives away all thoughts of sharp-tongued princesses. When he sinks a hand between Kamlai’s legs she hums and arches into his fingers. “Let me make it up to you?” 

She moans.“Since you asked so nicely...”

Aang spends the remainder of the afternoon proving the Avatar is as good as his word.

* * *

The port city of Palembang, for most of its history, was known as much for the riches of its floating markets as for the pleasure districts that brought in more gold than the merchants. Named the City of Flowers, Palembang was home to _oiran_ renowned for their skill and deep knowledge of the tantric arts. Each house, overseen by a matriarch, ensured its men and women were fed, healthy and safe. For generations, young monks from the Air temples were sent to the City of Flowers when they came of age. There had been much fond history between the Air Nomads, famed for their generosity, and the _oiran_ who often guided young airbenders through their first experiences of physical pleasure. Aang remembers the older boys whispering about when it would be their turn to visit Palembang. The Sisters also sent young initiates to the _oiran_ , but their coming-of-age rituals were secretive, and Aang never had the chance to learn more before the war had swept them away. There’s no telling what caches of lore and ritual had been lost with the Sisters, for they held much mysterious knowledge that even Masters like Gyatso weren’t privy to. Aang recalls a jocular remark by a peer during a meditation session with Sister Gewa, to which the nun had replied, with a serene if somewhat knowing smile, that some pleasures are found closer to home.

With the Air Nomads gone, the City of Flowers had withered in the onslaught of war. Raiders and pirates killed or drove off matriarchs and ravaged their houses. Many of the _oiran_ were captured and sold into bondage, while those that remained were forced to eke out a brutal existence selling their skills to passing soldiers.

When Aang visited Palembang for the first time, three years after the second pass of Sozin’s Comet, and saw the condition to which war had reduced a place of which he’d only ever heard whispers of beauty and wonder, it hit hard. The horror of metal pipes bursting through the murals of the Northern Temple revived fresh in his mind. He hadn’t realized how much he had once again hoped, against all odds, to find a trace of the world he once knew. 

While Katara spoke with the beleaguered healers, Aang went door to door among the city, distributing rations of food and medicine, talking, greeting, collecting stories of grief and hardship and survival. Most of the residents had long since lost their prized possessions to raiders, but despite his insistence that the supplies came at no cost, they tried to gift him some item in exchange: a baby’s gold bangle someone had managed to stow away, coins scraped from the bottom of a till, a piece of porcelain carefully preserved through the years. Gently, firmly, Aang reminded each of them the war was over, that their belongings were their own. In one house, a young woman put a threadbare silk handkerchief in his hand containing a string of wooden beads. 

Aang thumbed the carven Air sigils, the simple gleam of sandalwood, the yellow thread, spun from spider-fly silk the Sisters used to boil in great vats of saffron dye, filling the air with golden mist. The beads were a gift to her great-grandmother, the woman said, by a monk who loved her.

“You keep it, please,” she added, mildly alarmed at the tears wetting the Avatar’s face.

Aang composed himself and wrapped the beads in their handkerchief again, returning them to her with a smile, filled with a bittersweet ache.

“It was a gift,” he said. “It belongs with you.”

* * *

In the small kitchen outside Kamlai’s house, Aang adds more crushed chili into the lotus curry - one of his specialities - and checks the pot of rice.The air is humid and steam from the cooking fires don’t help, but he doesn’t bother with temperature regulation. In fact he doesn’t use any of his bending. When he wasn’t camped in the wilderness or otherwise in a hurry, he enjoys cooking without the extra boost of commanding all four elements. It slowed him down and aligned his senses. Like meditation.

Kamlai watches him fondly from the doorway. Behind her, the children argue about who has to bathe first, in between raucous, playful cries and their aunt’s admonishments that go unheard. “They’re going to want fruit pies, you know,” Kamlai informs him. 

Aang winks. “Already in the oven.” They chat casually while he finishes up. He’d traded his tunic and pants for a sarong knotted at the waist, Palembang-style. Only his tattoos mark him for the foreigner he is, but over the years his visits have diluted the novelty of his presence. He’s grateful for the chance, however ephemeral, to disappear into the fold of everyday people. Removing the pies from the stone oven he sets them down to cool off, admiring his handiwork, his back to Kamlai in the late afternoon light. She’s fallen silent mid-sentence, and when he turns to see why, there’s a strange look on her face.

“Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head as though warding off a chill, and he knows. 

“I’ve never really looked at it before.”  
Aang moves to stir the rice. “I don’t see it much either. What does it look like?”

“Like something inhuman.”

It’s true, he never saw his scar. But when storms rolled overhead, when he dreamed of the green lights beneath Ba Sing Se, and lately, when he made love to someone and _she_ filled his mind - he felt it. It wasn’t pain, or perhaps he’s simply carried the ache so long it’s grown familiar, become something he looks forward to. 

Or maybe Kamlai is right and he spends too much time alone.

“It was a long time ago,” he says. “She’s not that person anymore. Neither am I.” It’s unnecessary to defend Azula - no one in these parts knew her by name. But it is an admonishment to himself. Because he can’t stop thinking about her, carrying her with him to places and people she’s never met.

Kamlai lifts her eyebrows, but says nothing. Fresh from their bath, the children crowd into the kitchen, drawn by the scent of cooling fruit pies. 

* * *

  
The summer after he and Katara ended their relationship, Aang threw himself into helping rebuild Palembang. Despite the effort having been underway for some time, progress was slow. There was resentment between the fishermen who saw the remaining _oiran_ as a source of trouble, and the _oiran_ who resented the fishermen for colluding with soldiers to exploit and sell them during the war. Located in the southern waters of the Earth Kingdom, Palembang remained a principality of the Earth King, but its cultures and way of life differed vastly from King Kuei’s court. Hardline ministers on Ba Sing Se’s governing council wanted the _oiran_ disbanded, even while many of them kept _oiran_ as lovers. Others wanted to control and profit from the City of Flowers. The bickering and resentment had stalled most of the rebuilding efforts, until Aang intervened by pointing out the island’s ties to Air Nomad history, as well as their local governing system of fishermen and matriarchs who had maintained the city as a successful and flourishing outpost before the war. Palembang, he argued, deserved respect and recognition from the Earth King. Three years after his first visit, the fishermen and matriarchs sat down together as a council for the first time in nearly a century. It was cause for celebration.

There was _sombai_ and _ra_ , platters of steamed rice and fish, and dancing. Garlands of flowers hung from every neck, and praise songs were raised to Avatar Nyai who, according to the fishermen, had saved their ancestral fleet from a storm by riding out to the floundering boats on waves that followed her command. The _oiran_ had a different story - according to their foremothers, Nyai was born from the love between a foreign prince and one of their own, and had protected Palembang from invaders. It would take generations for the matriarchs and their _oiran_ to return to their former glory, and some doubted it was even possible. But hope was high in the City of Flowers that night, and a part of Aang revived in their eyes, feeling the ghostly presence of airbenders who had walked and danced and loved in that very same place.

Kamlai was no longer a working _oiran_. During the war, she had become mistress to a general in Ozai’s army who had given her three children and, after his death, enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her days. Born and raised in Palembang, she had used what power she had as a general’s mistress to safeguard her property and that of her neighbors from raiders, and had fought the fishermen’s council tooth and nail to restore the rights of _oiran_ after the war. With enough money to house herself, her children and her sister, Kamali stepped into the shoes of matriarch and presided over a budding group of _oiran_ looking to learn the old ways.

Aang found her instantly compelling. 

While the younger _oiran_ were reverent and awe-struck by the Avatar, Kamlai treated him with wry amusement, seeing in his youthful angst the untried monks her foremothers had once initiated into the tantric arts. One night in her company turned to three, and before he knew it he’d spent a month in Palembang.

Veteran _oiran_ like Kamlai knew the human body as well as any healer. He’d had an inkling before, usually on nights when the moon was high and both he and Katara lost themselves in that tidal pull, that _qi_ pathways were intrinsic to pleasure. But it wasn’t until Kamlai, whose expertise sometimes quite literally stole his breath, that he learned it wasn’t simply the Avatar State that could turn his tattoos into rivers of silver. During the war he had learned to sense his past lives at times of difficulty and danger, their rage and pain and wrath rushing to his aid. Now he felt their joy, their laughter, their passion. While he lay in breathless amazement, Kamlai told him a story passed down among the women in her family, that it was an _oiran_ who had shown the ancient airbenders how to find and trace _qi_ pathways in the body, and that the tattoos, their shape and positioning, captured among other things the grace and care of a lover’s touch.

Perhaps it was her expertise in the tantrika that she wielded with such practiced ease, but Kamlai had an air of both warmth and mystery that reminded him of Air Nuns. Aang felt more than just physically satiated after a night with her. His mind was often clearer, his thoughts less frenetic. As she was fond of saying after sessions where she taught him to reach transcendent states of bliss, “There’s more than one way to meditate.”

* * *

The evening meal draws more people than expected. Kamlai and her sister bring out stools and rattan mats and they sit outside, close to the kitchen, eating and laughing and drinking _sonti_ while the children fall asleep on their parents’ laps. Before the neighbors disperse, a few of the locals who’d given birth since the last time he visited bring their toddlers and infants to receive the Avatar’s blessing.

In the years since he defeated Ozai he’s received increasing requests to preside over the birth of various children - usually the progeny of diplomats and kings. Aang didn’t mind - Avatars since time immemorial had performed these acts - even if these occasions often left him feeling more a symbol than a person. But the people of Palembang don’t require pomp and ceremony, for him to don ceremonial clothes or give stately speeches. All they want is to put their children in his arms. 

He coos and hums at the babies, murmurs prayers for their well-being and tickles their feet. If a toddler is adventurous and their parents lenient enough, he uses airbending to give them a small taste of flight. 

_The purest blessing in the world,_ Gyatso used to say, _is the laughter of a child_

* * *

After the dishes and pots are cleared and the children put to bed, Kamlai sits beside him on the bench outside, nursing a cup of _sonti_ between them. Still in his sarong, Aang enjoys the cool night air, the salt tang of the sea. He has an early start in the morning to reach Ba Sing Se by the appointed time for King Kuei’s birthday celebration, but he can’t bring himself to leave just yet. A part of him cleaves fiercely to the days and months he’s spent in Palembang, even as another, greater part aches with a sense of finality. He’s visited Kamlai seasonally for a few years now, but their time is drawing to a close. He respected and admired her too much to use her as an escape.

“If I may,” Kamlai begins. “Your _mūlādhāra_. It still requires some healing, no?”

 _Mūlādhāra_ , the Earth Chakra. The first one he had unlocked with Guru Parthik’s help, and the one Azula’s lightning had violently blocked. The Avatar State had cleared it during his battle with Ozai, but he knew now that surviving death was not the same as embracing life.

He slides an arm around her waist with a slow grin. “What do you recommend?” 

Kamlai gently pushes his chin away. “I’m being serious, Aang.”

He withdraws his arm with a half hearted pout and gives her his undivided attention. “I’m listening.”

“The woman who gave you that scar-,”

“Kamlai -,”

She interrupts firmly. “You don’t have to tell me anything. You don’t need to.” Her voice softens and she touches his arm. “Whatever you feel for her - anger, hatred, even lust - let yourself feel it. Fully and without shame. It’s the only way you’ll be free.”

What _did_ he feel for Azula? During the war, she was the deadliest opponent he’d faced, not even because of her firebending prowess but because unlike many others, she was fearless about chasing him through the air. He couldn’t risk taking his eyes off her. It had disturbed him to learn of her collapse after the Agni Kai. Katara never spoke of that battle but he’d heard from others how, in a feat of peerless waterbending, she had frozen Azula before restraining her with an iron chain. He used to awake some nights covered in sweat, surrounded by ice with his hands chained up. Those years, he tried not to think about Azula. It was somehow too close to home.

It was true what he’d told Kamlai. He and Azula were no longer those same people, those warrior children. So who were they? 

He’d last seen Azula in the palace, draped in expensive silks and surrounded by attendants, her every move scrutinized. Like a beautiful kingfisher-hawk whose wings were clipped, no longer able to swoop and hunt. Alive, but not free. It was a feeling he understood all too deeply. There’s a knot in his chest at the thought of her, as though a part of him is imprisoned too. Aang exhales heavily, resting his elbows on his knees. 

The silence is filled with the chirp of beetles and the distant, lapping rush of the sea.

“When I was a little girl,” Kamlai says, “I went swimming in the bay, and was bitten by an _unagi_. The venom made me sick for days, and even when I recovered, I was listless. I couldn’t pay attention in my lessons, and the sight of the sea made me sick. I refused to go near the water, to eat or drink anything that smelled of the ocean.”

Aang regards her in surprise. Kamlai was an excellent swimmer, and enjoyed seafood with as much gusto as anyone in Palembang.

“I thought I was protecting myself you see, but really I was afraid. One day my father grew impatient with me, and brought home an _unagi_ for dinner. Chopped off its head in front of me. Cleaned it, prepared it, cooked it, and made me eat it.”

“What happened?”

Kamlai laughs. “It was the best meal I’d ever had. I licked my plate and asked for more. The next day, I woke up early and went out with him on his boat. We swam in the sea together. Baba and I had many disagreements, but I’ll never forget that day. That day, I took life between my teeth.”

He smiles at the image of Kamlai with her father.

“Are you suggesting I eat my former enemy?” 

He means it lightly, but the words have a strange effect. The images of Azula as an enemy, as an object of sympathy, fall away. He imagines her on top of him, lost in pleasure. He imagines kneeling between her legs and making her feel as unsteady, as out of control as he did. And he imagines waking up next to her, skin to skin, knowing she’ll never haunt his dreams again, because they’ll both be exactly where they belong.

“I thought that eel was an enemy, but he taught me a lesson,” Kamlai says. “ _Mūlādhāra_ is the root. It’s life and joy, family and passion. If this woman holds such power over you, maybe there’s a reason why.” She rises, stretching her shapely arms and touching his shoulder gently. “Do you need to sleep here tonight?”

Aang shakes his head. “No, I should get going.” He smiles up at her. “Thank you.”

She lingers for a moment, worry and fondness blending in her eyes, then stoops to kiss his cheek before going inside. When the children’s sleepy giggles fade and the lamps dim in her window, Aang gathers his staff, his scant belongings, and treks to Appa.

* * *

Both he and Appa are well rested enough to fly through the night and nearly a day before setting down a few miles outside Ba Sing Se. He sets Momo in the little wool bed he’d stitched for the lemur two years ago when it was clear his friend preferred sleeping beside him. The lemur is far more placid now than he once was, but some things never change, and Momo eyes the small bag of dried berries Aang retrieves from his pack with keen interest. While Appa munches happily on some grass, Aang feeds Momo a few berries, then a few more when the lemur insists. Satisfied at last, the lemur settles into a post-dinner nap while Aang sets up camp for one. 

He uses the vegetables he bought in Palembang to make himself a small pot of _thukpa_ The nourishing soup could be cooked with base ingredients, or made into a rich stew that served many mouths. It’s both simple and versatile, like most of his people’s cuisine. Nomad’s food. The monks used to tell stories of Air Nomads lost in the wilderness, or wandering in hostile places, who boiled earth and drank the muddy water for sustenance. Who made _thukpa_ out of grass. As a child, it was the most banal meal for him and his temple brothers. They longed for festival days, the rich sweetness of bison-curd and honey cake, the platters of steamed _buuz_ white as snow and stuffed with tender, spicy breadfruit.

Now hardly a week passes when he doesn’t cook himself _thukpa_ , varying the extra ingredients according to wherever he was staying, but keeping the spices true to his childhood. Its flavors return him to the dining hall in the Southern Air Temple, and all the faces he remembers gathering there for the afternoon meal. Prem who could chant _sutras_ and recite dirty jokes with equal skill. Arjun who insisted, once and only once, that he could shave his scalp without the aid of a reflective surface. And Thao, his nose buried in scrolls, shushing them all when their games interrupted his reading. Aang savors their memory now. They revive in the taste of lemongrass and _hīng,_ filling his throat and belly with warmth. His body absorbs them, they disappear. 

The storm he’d sensed on the horizon approaches early, so he raises himself and his companions an earth-tent.

* * *

He’s in no hurry to spend the next week in Ba Sing Se. It’s one thing to visit the walled city on his own and stay in the Lower Rings. The people there made no great fuss about his presence or absence; more often than not his visits were met with a list of tasks and problems they needed solving. As far as they were concerned, the Avatar being a single person granted him no grace when it came to the many issues they looked askance at him for failing to resolve. When he was younger, it used to frustrate him. Now, in a way, he’s grateful for their honesty.

The Upper Rings are a different matter.

The nobility plied him with lavish gifts he either had to refuse with as much politeness as he could muster, or find a way to discreetly give away. And then there were the endless offers of daughters, sisters, cousins, nieces. As wives or concubines, their families cared not. So long as they might be graced by proximity to the Avatar, even perhaps honored with bearing his children. No matter how often he tried to explain, as diplomatically as possible, that his people’s familial customs looked little like the harems, marriages and concubinage of Kuei’s court where the wealthy and powerful chose and discarded lovers at whim, they returned with offers of ever varied and younger women.

The storm dances across the sky. Each streak of lightning makes his blood rise, and his thoughts slip their leash. Azula’s touch flares in the center of his back. A blossom of pain and longing. 

_You need a wife._ Kamlai was right - he gave her insight more credence than he did the counsel of Kuei and his courtiers. He could, if he wanted, try to make a decent life with someone for whom he felt no strong passion, but respected and cared for. Someone to fall asleep and wake up next to. To greet the sunrise and share _thukpa_ with. But the old problems would persist. Even if a companion saw past his status as Avatar, they would lose patience with a nomadic life. They would want a house and a plot of earth to call their own, as was their due. 

Katara, who during the war had thrived on a traveling life, had grown wan and anxious from the constant moving. But then again, she’d always had a taste for finer things. When they passed through the richer cities in the Earth Kingdom, he saw how her eyes lingered on a silk sleeve or a porcelain teapot. This wasn’t a failing - she had spent so much of her life on the edge of privation, fighting for a better world. And though she would never seek wealth for its own sake, she was born for queenliness. By Zuko’s side Katara would wield influence and power to shape the world in peacetime as much as she had during the war, perhaps even more so. She, and by extension the Southern Water Tribe, would never go without again. Aang holds no bitterness for the way matters had turned out. And he doesn’t begrudge Zuko the things he could provide for Katara he himself could not.

While the animals sleep, he stands at the edge of their shelter watching the storm splinter into shards of violet, pink and blue. It brings him an odd sense of peace. For better or worse, he’s always run into thunderstorms during times of uncertainty. Even now, though he is older and wiser, a part of him longs to soar through that dark, electric sky. To bite down on lightning and empty his mind. More than nomadism, more than the thousands of godly lives that precede his own, it’s this drive, these impossible, restless cravings, that he longs to share with someone else. If that someone is Azula - he can’t say. But there were times he caught her eye, times they breathed the same close air, and he sensed a hunger roaring inside her that called to him like the elements did. 

It’s dry season in the Fire Nation now, blistering hot days and heavy, humid nights thick with the drone of mosquito-flies. Of course _she_ wouldn’t be troubled by too many of those, not in a bedroom in the palace fragrant with camphor and guarded by latticed windows. But perhaps she longs for a storm too, something to shake the trees and split the air. He imagines the taste of her, rich and smoky, yet crystalline. He imagines her scent mixing with salt on his tongue. 

The storm sings.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  


  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> (The Palembang mentioned here is fictional and bears no resemblance to the real city)
> 
> Happy Aang Week everyone! This was originally intended as a shorter piece but then it blossomed into something I'm really proud of. Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts, as you are able, or come hit me up at @irresistible-revolution on Tumblr xoxo


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